


And I'm Feelin' Good

by icarus_chained



Series: La Nuit [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Aftermath, Aliens, Altered Mental States, Alternate History, Car Chases, Career Change, Crimes & Criminals, Dimension Travel, Gen, Lovecraftian, Monsters, Original Fiction, Portals, Superheroes, Survival, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-02
Updated: 2017-05-02
Packaged: 2018-10-27 01:50:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10799196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: Etta James came back from the war, from the hole in the world at Saint-Hubert, a little bit changed. The whole world came back from the war a little bit changed. Then Etta happened to be in the right place at the right time, and a beautiful monster came and changed her world yet again.Random bit of backstory forNoonday Breakfast. How Etta met the lovecraftian superhero known as La Nuit.





	And I'm Feelin' Good

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the Nina Simone song. _It's a new dawn, it's a new day, it's a new life for me, and I'm feelin' good ..._

There weren't words for the holes in the world. The things that'd happened during the war, Saint-Hubert, Oran, Kiev, the other places, people didn't really talk about them. Because they didn't want to, yes, but also because it was _hard_ to. Literally, physically hard to. The language didn't come equipped with words for that sort of thing.

Being honest, Etta didn't remember too much about what she'd seen at Saint-Hubert. She wasn't sure if she'd _seen_ anything. She'd felt some things, yes, but even that was foggy. Distant, maybe, something that didn't really feel real. Even now. The hole had opened up right on top of her. She'd been driving back with casualties from the front, behind the lines, and she hadn't ... She'd felt it. Not seen it. Between one second and the next the world was different. Between one second and the next the world was _wrong_.

She'd clipped the edges of it, was what she'd done. She'd driven through the outer ring of it at an angle. She hadn't stopped. Some sort of instinct. She hadn't taken her foot off that pedal for a second. It'd probably saved her. Nobody else in the ambulance survived. Michel, her partner, he'd ... she still wasn't sure. He wasn't there when she reached the other side, anyway. The pair of casualties in the back had been. Sort of. More or less. They'd had to scrap the ambulance afterwards. There'd been no way to fix what they'd found back there.

She'd made it through, though. She'd driven into the wrongness, and she'd driven out the other side. Physically whole, and mostly mentally too, as far as she could tell. Her fear just got broken, that was the only thing. She'd left it behind in there. Sometimes, only a time or two, she wondered if she'd left anything else.

Wasn't much point worrying about it, though. If she _had_ left something, it was well gone by now. And if she'd left something, she didn't know enough about it to miss it. So. No point worrying. No point worrying about anything at all.

They'd shipped her back home after Saint-Hubert. She hadn't been all that sure why. She'd been fine. Fit to keep going. Maybe fitter than before, but they'd been a bit alarmed by her lack of fear. Maybe she had been a bit reckless then. It was hard to tell. These days she tended to judge that kind of thing by Jameson or Monique, but she hadn't really had anyone back then. Not with Michel gone. They'd been worried by her. Or by Saint-Hubert in general and her only by default, maybe, but they'd been alarmed by _something_. They'd sent her home, away from the war. Or away from most of it, anyway. Nobody got to get away from all of it. Especially not then. Not after the holes. Nobody in the world got to escape from that.

The capes started appearing even while the war was still going. There'd been people happy about that, at first. People looking to use them. People wanting to be protected by them. Then Cairo had happened, with Kiev close behind it. Privately, Etta still thought Kiev had been sort of justified. Anyone who'd crawled out of that ravine maybe had the right to go a little Saint-Hubert on the ones who'd put them there. It had terrified people, though. Terrified the world. Overnight the capes became a horror as much as an opportunity, and everyone on every side of the war had started thinking long and hard about what they really wanted to try facing. The war had staggered to a close in fits and starts, and in the aftermath the capes and the monsters had divvied up the world between them.

She'd been back home by that stage. Back in Silver City, driving trucks for whoever would hire her. The big bottling plant on the south side, mostly. A few other places. Trying to make a living, and maybe not managing so well. People were scared of her. She'd never entirely figured out why. Most of 'em didn't even _know_ she'd been at Saint-Hubert. She wasn't a cape, she hadn't come out of that hole in the world with anything special. She just didn't get scared anymore. She still wasn't sure why that rubbed people so badly the wrong way. She wasn't sure how so many of 'em had even _noticed_.

But they had. They'd noticed. Maybe she did have a bit of the other about her, even if she'd only ever clipped the edges of the hole. People who'd been in the war tended to glance twice at her, if usually never more than that. She'd come away with something, and it made people wary around her. It made it hard to make a living.

And then Monique happened. Or rather, then _La Nuit_ happened.

It had taken her a while to start hunting properly. She'd gotten herself well established as Monique first, as the battered, glamorous war heiress who'd fled Europe with her millions. Soon to be billions. She had a head for business, and teeth with both her faces. She carved herself out a place as the Lamont Heiress, as the head of Sterling Industries, before she did anything else. Etta'd only noticed it in hindsight, and then mostly because Monique had explained it to her, but she'd held back on her true face until her human one was as untouchable as she could make it. Only then, more than three years later, had La Nuit started coming out to play.

And Etta had run right into her. Almost at the very start. Etta had stumbled across her straight out of the gate. 

She'd been working less than legal jobs by then. People were leery of her. The legal jobs had run out, and when they had she'd discovered that there were certain kinds of people who still had a use for a black woman driver who gave people the willies and had no particular nerves to speak of. Etta hadn't been so good at planning anymore, not by then, but she was _excellent_ at getting people from point to point really damn fast and with no real care for whatever or whoever might happen to be in the way. She was still pretty excellent at that, even if her employer was a little different now. Back then, there'd been an operation or two who'd found a use for her. She'd been pretty good at finding them, too. Girl had to make a living. It was amazing what necessity could make you good at.

She'd felt La Nuit coming. That night. The monster had still been mostly just a rumour then, something people were only just starting to encounter, and nobody'd put too much store by it. Etta hadn't put any at all, but that was less because she hadn't thought La Nuit existed and more because she mostly hadn't cared. Until the monster made itself her problem, she'd been happy enough to let it be someone else's. But then it _was_ her problem. Then everything had gone belly up, and La Nuit had been very much her problem indeed.

She'd felt her coming. Like Saint-Hubert. The sense of something _other_. She'd been driving steady down the warehouse district, six men with very large guns in the back of her truck, and she'd felt that hole in the world all over again. She'd felt La Nuit coming.

If she was completely honest, Etta had to admit that she still remembered that chase really, really fondly. It'd been something special. Mobsters with guns were one thing, but they didn't quite give the same thrill as artillery. La Nuit, though. Monique. She'd given all of that and then some. Etta'd felt all her instincts come back online at once, the second she felt that brush of otherness. She'd been swerving around an invisible obstacle and gunning it before La Nuit had even materialised herself. She'd _kept_ gunning it, long after the men in the back had stopped screaming. Like that hole in the world. You don't stop until you're through. You don't stop for anything.

Monique caught up with her eventually. The thing with capes, they weren't stationary like the holes were. They were a good bit smarter too. Monique caught up with her. The truck had been thrown down a storm drain, all but shredded around her, and Etta'd pulled herself out to find La Nuit in all her glory looming over her. It'd been just them by the end. They'd left four corpses scattered along the route behind them, and La Nuit had gotten the last two gunmen as they pulled themselves out of the wreck. By the time Etta'd climbed out of the cab herself, it'd been just her and Monique.

She hadn't been afraid. Looking back, she thought that was when she knew, when she really _knew_ , that her fear was gone for good. If anything in the world should have brought it back, it would have been La Nuit. It would have been that pitch black, liquid, gliding figure, the glass-like claws, the icicle teeth. The way she moved, like nothing that hadn't come out of a hole in the world could move. If anything could have made her fear come back, it would have been La Nuit. It would have been Monique.

But it hadn't. It hadn't. Etta'd pulled herself out of that cab, blood in her eyes and a liberated flare gun in her hand, and she hadn't been scared at all. Curious, mostly. She didn't remember Saint-Hubert. She didn't remember what she might have seen there. She'd looked up at La Nuit, at the teeth and the darkness and the wrongness, and most of what she'd been was curious, and a little bit wondering where best to try and shoot her.

Monique had laughed at her. It'd been an odd sort of laugh, high and tinkling, nearly beautiful. Etta'd scrunched up her face at it, bemused and incredulous, and La Nuit had ... flowed, let's call if flowed, across the intervening space to coil around her, over her. Etta'd blinked, and pointed the flare gun up under the monster's jaw. A clawed limb reached out and lowered it back down. Etta'd allowed it. The gesture had been courteous enough. There'd been no force to it, and La Nuit could shear metal if she wanted to. She'd been very gentle with Etta. She'd been very amused.

She'd called Etta Outside-touched, while she reached up to dab Etta's blood away from her eyes. Etta'd huffed at that, fishing a hanky out of her pocket and reaching up to knock the limb aside. Take care of the matter herself. It hadn't been to her standards, not without a mirror, but she didn't trust anybody to put her to rights except herself. Monique had watched her. In hindsight, Etta thought she'd been charmed. She'd taken a shine to Etta, anyway. Enough not to kill her. Enough to offer her a job.

Etta'd taken it. La Nuit had offered real good pay, guaranteed steady work. Not just jobs here or there, when there was a need, but a permanent position, with a good pay and a nice uniform. Etta still thought Monique had thrown that last in just for the hanky, but she wasn't complaining. It was a nice uniform. She looked good and neat in it. She might have taken the job just for that.

She might have taken the job, too, for how Monique wasn't afraid of her. Not that Monique was scared of anything, mind you, but it was nice not to give someone the willies just by being there. It was nice not to have to worry about who would lay her off just 'cause they got the chills one too many times.

There was Jameson, after that. There was the house on the hill, Chateau Lamont, there was the nice apartment and the really, _really_ nice car. There was noonday breakfasts and a lie-in every morning. There was every reason in the world to take the job, to keep the job, to shoot the odd person in the face for the job. La Nuit did need help now and then, just for stragglers, for people here or there who weren't where they were supposed to be. Etta didn't mind that. Monique and Jameson _did_ , for some reason, they tended to mind a lot, but Etta didn't. Her flare gun had its own neat little compartment under her dash now, and she had a handy little pistol to go with it. And she had a car, nice and armoured, and all of Silver City to play chicken with in it. Life was good. Life was excellent, really.

And, hey, maybe that was the word for it then. For the holes in the world, for what had happened to her because of them. Maybe they were good, excellent, or maybe just the knock-on effects of them were. Either way, though. These days, Etta was right where she wanted to be either way. Right where she was. Nowhere else. For friends and for fear and for a really nice uniform.

'Cause hey, whatever else, a girl had to make a living, right?


End file.
